Artist's Statement
I believe that art can reunite awareness and feeling with all that is natural in the planet and cosmos about us, from microcosm to macrocosm, and that expressions of form created with paint in liquid color flow patterns can connect the human observer with organic nature by suspending the logical mind so the eye can really "see" and deeper resonances be felt.
The aesthetics of nature are similarly sensed by anyone standing before the Grand Canyon, or in observing color Hubble images of giant gas galaxies far away. My artistic interest lies in the creation of such patterns that reflect not only natural external geologies and cosmic flow images, but also living images of our internal landscapes, capturing them as flow images in paint and mixed media on canvas. Accordingly my work is primarily abstract geologic process painting in bold colors with rich textural surfaces (geologic as from the Greek: γη, gê, "earth"; and λόγος logos, “speech" lit. to speak about the earth).
My paintings are landscapes of spirit and consciousness in nature, for the process of painting is also the way of ecstasy in a real sense, to me. I believe it to have been similar for the artists painting on the cavern walls at Altamira or Lascaux more than 15,000 years ago. For me the process of laying down liquid hues in patterned frameworks is also a spiritual practice, surrounded by improvisation, a liturgical-like practice which like music or dance, becomes an improvisation about a theme. I dance with the paints and gravity, with nature and the moment, and with my own history and culture and being as I develop a canvas. I watch the paint and respond to its needs as it mixes and flows before my eyes and I help give birth to those archetypal patterns of flowing nature that one sees, for example, in the erosion patterns of geologic time tracing itself in the landscape seen from high above through an airplane window.
I am seeking to elicit natural patterns and flow shapes and for this it is important to have a wide spectrum of pigment materials in my pallet, as well as liquid mediums of different viscosities. Accordingly most of my work includes a broad range of mediums within the same painting: always water in the beginning followed by oils and salt water, soaps, polyeurethane, methacrylates and Galkyd. An important dimension is texture to lift the painting from the plane of flatness. To achieve depth and balance among the flow patterns in the drying medium, I use crystal growing salts, sand, legumes, metallic powders and dried nature, often from my garden.
Equally as important as the selection of material is the process, which in my work continues to evolve. My interest in process as an exploration of technique stems from my experience studying the physics of materials and chemistry, which trained me to structure process with the scientific methods of observation and manipulation. In some sense I incorporate research methodology into each painting, and in that dimension, each painting is an experiment pointing to the next painting. During the act of painting I feel that I am an explorer, an experimenter, a discoverer.
When I first began to paint I created a series of water colors, very wet, horizontally. To dry them I put them in the oven. To my surprise the heat accentuated the drying patterns, and I discovered that pattern could be modulated by mixing the paint water mixture with various chemical substances. By varying the drying speed with heat, a wide range of drying flow patterns could be revealed. The subtlety of the color gradations reminded me of the paper chromatography experiments I had done in organic chemistry lab. This began my fascination with the process of color liquid flow and interaction.
I worked with the canvas horizontal to the table or close to the floor, and early in my work I discovered how effective it is to modulate the flows of the liquid paint with incremental, slight changes of angle of the canvas from horizontal as I observe the paint slowly flowing and drying. I now use a large carpenter’s level and small cardboard squares to set a new canvas perpendicular to gravity before I begin painting. From that point I use gravity as my paintbrush.
I also use heat lamps to modulate the drying speed and effects of different paint mixtures pooled on the canvas. I influence the flow of the liquid paint by placing variously shaped objects under the canvas to create slopes and ridges for the flowing paint, and to form lakes and pools in depressions of the canvas, essentially incorporating gravity itself as an invisible paintbrush. I sometimes use heat and moving air to modulate both the flow patterns and the texture (for example pigment in a very salty water mixture will form larger crystals when dried by moving a heat lamp close to the surface of the drying paint and blowing gently as the crystals form).
Recently I have become interested in exploring ways to keep the paint in a seemingly liquid state of flow frozen in time. I began to experiment with various acrylic and oil based varnishes and gloss finishes, including polyurethanes and oil based materials such as Galkyd. Some materials were not satisfactory in that the outer layer dries too fast, sealing the wet material beneath and causing problems in that the material never really dries and causes pooling and drips to break through the paint once the horizontal canvas is raised to a perpendicular position. I have solved this problem in that I now know the sequences in which to apply materials and finishes in order to evoke dried flow pattern images.
My paintings are often highly layered. The process of layering is an intuitive approach in which the integrity of each layer affects the final image. This can be seen, for example, in Yosemite Valley, which I often visit. The geologic flow process is one of successive and simultaneous layering of disparate material in various viscosities drying over time and modulated by the fractal nature of time and nature in our universe. My paintings are microcosms of this macrocosmic landscape, and over the past several years have increasingly grown to include numerous layers of material, with upper layers revealing the lower through careful use of transparent and translucent mediums and decreasing amounts of pigment material.
Academically, it was during my first art history course, that I was suddenly captivated by painting, particularly Kandinsky, Pollock, Klee, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Sam Francis, and Clyfford Still. Of many books which had a major influence on my understanding and work, there are four I would like to mention in particular. The first is Kandinsky’s “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” (London, 1914), so beautiful and thought provoking, Kandinsky first opened my eyes to the perception of color and form as musical composition. I found in John Dewey’s “Art as Experience” (New York, 1934) a particularly reinforcing resonance with my own understanding that the real art was not the residual artifact, but that intensely felt moment of creation, the dynamic intersection of time with the consciousness of the artist creating and dancing with the work of art in a particular life and a particular cultural moment. I also was deeply impressed by Erich Neumann’s analytical description of the process in which the collective unconscious works through the artist to communicate transpersonally within a particular culture, an idea he developed in “Art and the Creative Unconscious” (Princeton, 1959). The fourth book, and one which has had a profound influence on my approach to painting, is George Kubler’s “The Shape of Time” (Yale University Press, 1962) which I found during my senior year and have read and re-read many times, and which heightened my perception to the visualization of the flow of time and space on culture and in my own work in particular.
For me painting is a means to explore inner consciousness even more perhaps than outer consciousness. Painting has led me to an awareness of the spiritual… to painting as a contemplative practice. The creative act at its core is the intersection of the fusion of the artist and the living materials giving birth to the artifact. It can stand forth on its own as a contemplative tool each time there is an intersection, an interaction, between the art object and the observer, creating conditions for an experience of that still point where being and becoming, time and eternity, microcosm and macrocosm merge.
My paintings currently deal with consciousness, color, form and nature, and what is done with the painting artifact after it has dried. Most of my work is completely abstract, however I have been strongly attracted to paintings used within other cultural contexts for the exploration of “consciousness”, specifically in the context of contemplative practices. These include in particular Tibetan mandalas, South Indian yantras and medieval Russian icons. I have studied all three techniques and continue to study Russian iconography (egg tempra on gessoed board) under Vladislav Andrejev from St. Petersburg. My goal as a painter is to discover ways to incorporate multi-cultural spiritual symbolism within my paintings, without destroying the living quality of flow abstraction. I would like to explore ways in which I might find a synthesis of my technique of abstract flow painting with contemplative symbolism found in the style of medieval Russian icons and South Indian yantras.
Shelli's grandmother Roberta Lewis